Thursday, November 15, 2012

Some days, my days feel like Groundhog Day. They loop and repeat themselves.
It is a given that school and academic stuff, they work well with repetition. Every morning, they know that they have to read their Chinese reader. It is the only way they are ready for the next week. By the end of the week, they are smooth, precise and confident. So, okay, in that way, repetition is great.

But even things that are fun for them, they do a rinse and repeat on me. Once they figure out that they enjoy something, they do it, exclusively, to death.

We read the same books every night. To the point that we have memorised the Gruffalo (Evan's favourite), The Snail and the Whale (Muffin's favourite) and The Stick Man (Jordan).

Then there are activities that they want to do. Any where they have been with the school before, we have to follow suit. In the exact same fashion. It is Evan, the stickler for rules that demands that. So, because the school has been to the Butterfly Park at Sentosa, we had to go. A few months ago, I took them to the Botanic Gardens that front Cluny Road and we have been back twice since, to do the exact same thing; pick up rotting or if we are lucky, dried up fruit.Then, most recently, there was the Kids Kampong that they went about a fortnight ago and the minute there was a free day in sight and Packrat was back in town, they were clamouring to go.

It makes it easy to keep them occupied because we can go to the same places again but there are some places that they have gone to that they would like to repeat, like indoor playgrounds that I try not to accede to. But when I don't accede to their flavours of the month, then, like a broken record player, they ask and ask and ask. For an entire year, Evan has repeated his desire to revisit the indoor playground with air cannons. In this aspect, I am pretty sure, he has more resolve to repeat himself than I do, to repeat myself.